Oxley, Natasha ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0011-7113 (2020) Children as Co-creators in Chiffchaff Children's Theatre Productions: defining methodology and evidencing children's role in the creative process. In: Talking TYA, 8-10 October 2020, Online. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In this paper, I give an overview of the main characteristics of the creative process of making shows with my theatre company, Chiffchaff Children’s Theatre. I outline the company’s aims of creating gentle, accessible theatre for an early years audience and their families, including babies. I emphasise the importance of my own children as co-creators in new shows and I explore possible ways to document, quantify, and qualify the children’s input.
I set up Chiffchaff Children’s Theatre in 2011, when I had a five year old and a one year old. As a parent I felt that many shows I took my children to see made my son hyperactive, leaving me to deal with the consequences. I did not yet know that he had autism and ADHD, but instinctively I wanted to create gentle, inclusive theatre that children could understand and engage in as audience members and future theatre-goers.
I now have three children, two have ADHD and autism, and they have all been involved in each Chiffchaff creative process, as have my co-performer's children. Initially I took this for granted, before realising that it is a key characteristic. We ask the children’s opinions on stories to adapt, they give us ideas when we get ‘stuck’ in rehearsal, and we show them completed shows to see if they ‘work’. Children are our problem-solvers and ‘test’ audiences. This is particularly valuable for interactive aspects of performance. Here, the Chiffchaff approach resonates with the Steiner Waldorf approach in that “the children are welcome, but not required to help” (Nicol: 2016, 10). Having my autistic sons’ input has also been useful in developing our use of soft toys as puppets and negotiating the performer’s relationship to them, since one son does not suspend disbelief with certain types of puppetry. Having the children as test audiences highlights the need for fully embodied, connected performances. As Tony Graham puts it, “if you or I don’t really care about it, why on earth should they?” (Wood: 1997, 32), and as Stanislavski said, “it is necessary to act for children as well as for adults, only better” (Goldberg, cited in Wood: 1997, 35).
As Matthew Reason and David Wood agree, there is little research “that deals with children’s engagement with theatre as theatre” (Reason: 2010, ix), and “there is little about the dramatic theory of theatre for children in print” (Wood : 1997, xxii). This paper begins to theorise the engagement of children in the Chiffchaff creative process and as audience members. One Chiffchaff performer said of the creative process “I appreciated the way you were very child-focused, really considering the show from the perspective of the children watching it”, and another said “I think all Chiffchaff shows try to imagine the experience from a child's point of view”. Audience members have said “what you do is very simple but it’s familiar, it’s accessible”. “Engaging” is a recurrent word in audience feedback, as is “gentle”. I endeavour here to interrogate the Chiffchaff process and its impacts, and to begin to document and analyse what has essentially been an instinctive process, situating it within existing theoretical frameworks while contributing to the field.

Key words: Early Years, inclusivity, adaptation, engagement

Item Type:	Conference or Conference Paper (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	theatre for young audiences; TYA; inclusivity; performance
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theater
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > Literature & Drama Research Group Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > School of Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS)
Related URLs:	http://www.facebook.com/BaboroGalway/pos...
Last Modified:	10 Mar 2022 14:58
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/35364

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